When prophets testify but Neville doesn’t believe them

According to nearly every one of his blog posts, Jonathan Neville’s primary concern is that Latter-day Saints know “what the prophets and apostles have always taught about the New York Cumorah.” He believes that many LDS scholars are part of what he calls “the M2C* citation cartel,” a “fifth column” that “rejects the teachings of the prophets and apostles” about Cumorah.

Since accepting the teachings of prophets and apostles about Book of Mormon geography is apparently important to Neville, certainly he would see these teachings of apostle (and later Church president) Spencer W. Kimball of being of prime importance:

Not long before the birth of Christ, a great man by the name of Hagoth left continental America with colonies of people. He “went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship…and launched it forth into the west sea.… And behold, there were many of the Nephites who did…sail forth with much provisions, and also many women and children; and they took their course northward.…”

And the next year: “This man built other ships, And the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it;…and set out again to the land northward. And it came to pass that they were never heard of more…And…one other ship also did sail forth….” (Alma 63:5–8.)

It has been thought by many people that they went to the Pacific islands. And the scripture would so indicate:

“But great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren.” (2 Nephi 10:21.)

Elder [Matthew] Cowley and I visited some of these peoples on the “isles of the sea” and found them developing and progressing and doing well.

—Elder Spencer W. Kimball, April 1947 General Conference

In 1976, when he was President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Spencer W. Kimball told the saints in Samoa:

It seems to me rather clear that your ancestors moved northward and crossed a part of the South Pacific. You did not bring your records with you, but you brought much food and provisions. And so we have a great congregation of people in the South Seas who came from the Nephites, and who came from the land southward and went to the land northward, which could have been Hawaii. And then the further settlement could have been a move southward again to all of these islands and even to New Zealand. The Lord knows what he is doing when he sends his people from one place to another. That was the scattering of Israel. Some of them remained in America and went from Alaska to the southern point. And others of you came this direction.

President Joseph F. Smith, when president of the Church, said to the [Maori] people of New Zealand, “I would like to say to you brethren and sisters from New Zealand, you are some of Hagoth’s people, and there is No Perhaps about it!” He didn’t want any arguments about it.

—President Spencer W. Kimball, Conference Report, Samoa Area Conference 1976, 15

So here we have the President of the Church, the prophet and seer of the Lord, testifying that the saints in Samoa and the other Pacific Islands were descendants of Hagoth, the shipbuilder described in the Book of Mormon. And President Kimball also quoted another president of the Church, Joseph F. Smith, who said “there is No Perhaps about it!” Therefore, according to President Kimball, there should be no arguments about where Hagoth went or who his descendants are.

So, does Jonathan Neville believe the prophets and apostles? It seems not.

This image is an extract from Moroni’s America – Maps Edition, a collection of maps edited by Jonathan Neville, based on his earlier book, Moroni’s America: The North American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Map 73 envisions Hagoth’s travels from the perspective of the “Heartland” Book of Mormon geography, of which Neville is an enthusiastic proponent:

Jonathan Neville’s fantasy map of Hagoth’s travels (Alma 63:5–8)

According to Neville, Hagoth built his ships at the south end of Lake Michigan (one of several “sea wests,” per his maps) and sailed north. From there he sailed up St. Marys River—which includes rapids that vessels larger than canoes could not pass until locks were built in 1855—into Lake Superior. Neville’s map also indicates Hagoth could have sailed east to Lake Huron (the “sea north,” which is east of the sea west) into Georgian Bay and then up an unnamed river. (From its position on the map, it appears to be the French River, which runs sixty-eight miles upstream, through numerous falls and rapids, to Lake Nipissing.)

Setting aside, for the moment, the impossibility of Hagoth’s “exceedingly large” ships navigating the rivers that flow between and into the Great Lakes, how would Hagoth have exited this freshwater system and traveled to Hawaii and the Pacific Islands? He hardly could have sailed from Lake Huron to Lake Erie, and sailing from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River would have required him to go over Niagra Falls! (The Welland Canal, which allows ships to bypass the falls, wasn’t completed until 1829.)

I’m curious to know how Neville reconciles his fantasy map with the tesimonies of two prophets of the Church. Does he accept their teachings or not? His maps don’t seem to indicate that he does.

—Peter Pan

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.